Photo: Construction is underway for a 22-unit housing project on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone reservation, the first housing project on the reservation in over 20 years, on Monday, September. 15, 2025, in Fallon, Nev. (Jimmy Romo / Nevada Public Radio)

Housing isn’t just a problem in major cities in Nevada. It’s also an issue in rural parts of the state, including Tribal nations.

Thousands of tribal members want to come back home, but there’s not enough housing available at the moment.

KNPR’s Jimmy Romo visited two tribes to tour their newest housing developments.

On the Walker River Paiute Tribe reservation, tribal officials and community members break ground on the highly anticipated water looping system.

This water project was a decade in the making as Tribal members have been wanting to live on the reservation. With no available housing, they can’t.

Genia Williams came back home to the reservation a decade ago to become the housing director for the Walker River Paiute Tribe to build out the tribe. Instead she was met with unavoidable infrastructure issues.

“You’re thinking, OK, you can build homes and do things and find out that that was not going to happen, there had to be a moratorium.”

It wasn’t until 2024 that the Walker River Paiute Tribe was approved for a $20 million grant. That funding was later taken away months after President Donald Trump took office.

Walker River Paiute Tribe Chairwoman Melanie McFalls knew that, although the tribe is trying to save funds, coming up with the water looping funding would be worth the investment for generations to come.

“You know, it was kinda hard to just give up $3 million just like that, but we had to or else we would’ve lost the entire project.”

Forty miles north of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, the Fallon Shoshone-Paiute Tribe’s housing program development manager, Russell Dyer-Redner, has seen how difficult getting housing can be.

“It seems like you’re basically waiting for someone to die or something to even have a chance at housing.”

When Russell wanted to come back home to the reservation, he was told the same thing as many others: there is no housing available.

To combat the lack of housing, the tribe is building a 22-unit housing project.

These projects are adding housing to the reservation, but in small numbers with the help of federal funding.

These federal funds come out of a big pot of money where all 574 federal tribes nationwide are applying for a piece of the pot. And every year the pot keeps shrinking.

Federal appropriations like the Indian Housing Block Grant have declined for decades, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study from this year.

“There’s always going to be a shortage, but if we can meet a majority of our needs then we’ll you know do our do diligence, and hopefully people will be able to come back,” Williams said.

And that’s what leaders from tribes across the state want, to bring their members back home.

Leya Hale holds up her regional Emmy for “Reclaiming Sacred Tobacco,” which won Best Topical Documentary at the Upper Midwest Emmy Awards, Bloomington, Minn., Saturday, October 7, 2017. (Courtesy Leya Hale)

Five Native Americans were among the 29 people named Bush Fellows this year.

The Bush Foundation provides up to $150,000 over two years for their fellows to build on their leadership skills.

In the first of five profiles, Brian Bull of Buffalo’s Fire shares what an award-winning filmmaker plans to do.

Leya Hale has been with Twin Cities PBS for 13 years and has won regional Emmys for her work, including the films “Reclaiming Sacred Tobacco” and “The People’s Protectors”.

But the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and Diné Nations artist feels she falls short in one area: technical expertise.

“Learning about how to capture good quality audio. Even when it comes to more of the technical side of editing like color-correcting and those types of things, that’s something that I really want to learn more of, because I get asked often to do mentoring to up-and-coming youth and storytellers.”

Hale’s grand vision is to create a worldwide network of Indigenous filmmakers and artists who will share their cultural stories authentically and accurately.

Hale also hopes to use her Bush Fellowship award to build on her Dakota language skills.

Her new film, “Medicine Ball”, is set for release next year.

It looks at how basketball emerged out of boarding school.

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Friday, November 14, 2025 – A Pueblo answer to the work and renown of artist Georgia O’Keefe